Virtual private networks (VPNs) provide users with the ability to send and receive data across public data networks in ways similar to sending and receiving data over a private data network. As a result, applications running over a VPN on a public network may benefit from the increased security, functionality and management efficiency of private networks. Optical VPNs (OVPNs) may offer greater capacity and bandwidth than electronic VPNs, such as electronic layer 2 VPNs (L2VPNs) or layer 3 VPNs (L3VPNs). An OVPN is a virtual network defined in software that maps to a physical optical network infrastructure. In an OVPN, a network virtualization layer may abstract virtual nodes and virtual links from physical nodes and physical links. An OVPN may define a slice or portion of the physical network that is independent from any other slice or portion of the physical network. The OVPN may be defined independently with respect to bandwidth, users, user management, network services, network/service related policies and the like. Further, a service provider's network operator may create multiple independent VPNs over a shared physical network infrastructure.
Different OVPNs may follow different OVPN models or abstractions. For example, an OVPN may follow a cloud abstraction model, and include cloud and edge points where services terminate, but no nodes or links visible to the end user. In another example, an OVPN may follow a virtual network topology abstraction model, and include virtual nodes and links visible to the end user.
An OVPN may include several generalized virtual transport network components. For example, the OVPN may include one or more virtual transport nodes. The virtual transport nodes may operate in a logical transport system or virtual transport system with or without switching capability. The OVPN may also include one or more virtual transport ports, which may be logical ports for service connectivity that map to physical port resources. Some, but not necessarily all, of the physical ports may be enabled for software defined networks (SDNs). In addition, the OVPN may include a virtual transport link, which may be a generalized topological bandwidth link that maps to some set of physical resources and provides a tunnel to an adjacent virtual transport node, or a tributary. The virtual transport link may include logical endpoints and link attributes. Further, the virtual transport link may have multi-service transparency and may span multiple physical systems.
An OVPN may be used for a layer one (L1) instant video network (WN) with bandwidth dedicated to customers, tenants or end users. In examples described herein, the term end users may be used interchangeably with the terms customers or tenants. A service provider may reserve bandwidth on a per customer basis. This reservation may include guaranteed performance and availability of the OVPN bandwidth. The topology of the virtual transport network (VTN) may be visible to tenants, and include virtual switches and virtual links. In addition, dedicated capacity may be pre-allocated to each virtual link. Also, a service provider may provision services over allocated bandwidth per a customer's Ll IVN routing policy or OVPN routing policy. The service provider may implement a customer's routing policy using a path computation element (PCE) under multiple constraints, include one or more of latency, cost, number of hops and the like. Also, the service provider may provision services allowing customers to implement diverse routing and customer-driven traffic engineering. Further, the service provider may provide end users with L1 IVN specific monitoring or OVPN specific monitoring, including monitoring for specific events, triggering alarms and performance monitoring (PM). In addition, the service provider may provide end users with user interface (UI) and application programming interface (API) programmability. Such programmability may include the use of a representational state transfer (REST) interface, network configuration protocol (NETCONF) and the yet another next generation (YANG) language.
An OVPN may be used for a network abstracted L1 IVN with bandwidth dedicated to end users. In an example, an OVPN created using virtual links with dedicated bandwidth may expose a network-level abstraction to the customer/end-users. The service provider may use an internet-based service model for the OVPN. Further, the capacity for the OVPN may be carved out from an SDN domain. The service provider may assign the capacity for the OVPN. Also, the service provider may isolate each OVPN from the other OVPNs. In addition, the service provider may provide parallel links in the OVPN which may be differentiated by different features, such as latency, for example. In an example, the network topology may be abstracted with no customer visibility to the link topology of the OVPN. In a further example, an SDN controller-based route computation may be made based on service requirements established by end users.
An OVPN may be used for a network abstracted L1 IVN with a bandwidth pool shared by end users. The service provider may use an internet-based service model for the OVPN. Further, there may be no capacity specifically dedicated for the OVPN. Instead, the OVPN may share the same bandwidth pool as the production network. In an example, the service provider may provide no network topology representation to the end-user. In a further example, an SDN controller-based route computation may be made based on service requirements established by end users.